We live in a competitive society. I know this because I am terrified of competition; humans struggling against one another, solo or (even worse) on teams to determine who is BETTER. Who is the WINNER, and who goes home to SUCK IT and eat sad ice cream in abject loser misery. I will lose on purpose right out the gate rather than attempt to win and let fate or talent determine who gets to feel all right about themselves that day, and who will feel like a pile of loose turd. It's less stressful.
I have largely set my life up to avoid competition. Education, for all of its other shortcomings--and they are myriad, and I'll tell you about them sometime if you don't know them already from your own undoubtedly awesome experience with compulsory schooling--is, in theory, a sanctuary where competition (among staff) is a non-issue. At least not on the surface…
Recently I went to visit a friend in Fresno. Before you judge: it was wonderful; seeing my friend and our other friend who met us there from San Diego was super fun. It even rained, and that was the icing on that vacation-cake. We made a list of a million things to do together and managed to do most of them. One of the items on the list was playing Scrabble.
Here's the thing, and I talked about it with my San Diego friend the next time I saw her: I spend most of my waking life and self-talk feeling ambivalent at best about what I'm doing and how good I am at doing it. The one thing, my money shot, is words: language, conversation, vocabulary, grammar. This is the island of self-worth that I consciously or unconsciously go to when shit gets
bad--this idea that my intelligence in this area is enough to make me a worthwhile person. That I'm not a complete wash because I have a modicum of goodness and smartness, and this is where it lies.
So when the three of us sat down to play Scrabble--and, jesus, writing it and hearing the sound of the word in my head, it's like what rats do in walls, what a claustrophobic and terrible grasping word, why couldn't it be a beautiful word like "Excelsior"??--when we began the game, I felt the old rotten sorrow of competition seep into my soul. And I lamented; but there were words to make, as best I could.
As we played, I realized that winning made me feel terrific. When I was ahead--why, what a wonderful game Scrabble was! How clever! And how clever was I, winning? Wow! Fantastic! Holy shit! And I realized that it wasn't that I am not a competitive person--I am a bitterly competitive person, and when I fell behind and ultimately lost the game, I realized that it is a surplus of competitiveness, not its absence, that makes me so reluctant to compete. And by god, when I sit down at the Scrabble board, I expect to win. Because I'm about this shit! This is my wheelhouse! I will crush you!
Only I didn't. And now I've taken to playing Scrabble online with my top-ranked co-worker. We just finished our first game. He won, of course; but I feel like we both played a pretty top-notch game; mid 200's, respectable.
Even though we both played a pretty genius game, now I've dropped in the rankings. Because it's not how many points you earn or that you were able to bust out the word "phlegmy," it's who wins. One simple metric. My ranking dropped, my heart dropped, a single tear dropped on the keyboard.
(Not really; it sounds good, though.)
Is this story about "how I overcame my low self-esteem to enjoy the simple friendly game of Scrabble?" Nope. I don't think so. I enjoy it, but it's a terrible kind of enjoyment; I wake up in the middle of the night and plex on the board in my mind's eye. And, joy, with Facebook Scrabble you can ask the "teacher" what the ABSOLUTE BEST WORD would have been. I think that is the part that is the worst for me, like ripping off a just-formed scab. "Oh, look at that. If I'd been smart enough to throw "VIANDE" with the V and D on triple letter scores I would have gotten another 10 points. GREAT."
It's just some observations about competitiveness and low self-esteem, the sanctuary of intellect (" ") and how much I like the feeling of winning at Scrabble. Which, if I keep playing Joe Crispin, I'll never feel again. But maybe that's OK, cause I have to figure out what winning means to me--a hidden, personal metric that nobody else will see; or, if seen, would understand.
